CEDH · PRESS;GENERAL;ENG — 28 octobre 1999

.s3ABFC313 { font-size:10pt } .s598389F9 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; font-size:12pt } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s85646119 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify; font-size:12pt } .s16C75182 { margin-top:0pt; margin-left:324pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:36pt; text-align:justify; font-size:12pt } .s26D0A87B { margin-top:0pt; margin-left:360pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify; font-size:12pt } .s23A41E03 { width:36pt; display:inline-block } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sEDC5336B { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:12pt } .s19E53254 { width:2.39pt; display:inline-block } .s6442AFE5 { width:23.04pt; display:inline-block } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .sA1D3DA2E { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 }     EUROPEAN COMMISSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS   599 28.10.1999     End of an era - last meeting of European Commission of Human Rights     The European Commission of Human Rights, which for more than 45 years has played a key role in protecting human rights in Europe, is this week meeting for the last time.     Set up in 1954, the Commission has registered more than 45,000 complaints from people of well over 100 nationalities alleging violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights by Contracting States. At the end of this week it will have produced more than 3,700 reports on the merits of cases which it considered to raise complex issues of fact and law under the Convention.     Until November last year, the Commission [1] was the first port of call for all new complaints. After a preliminary examination, it would decide whether or not a case was admissible. Where applications were declared admissible and no friendly settlement had been reached, the Commission drew up a report establishing the facts and expressing an opinion on the merits of the case. One of its tasks was to conduct fact-finding missions outside Strasbourg where the written evidence was insufficient; in recent years, many such missions have been carried out.     Cases would then be sent to the Council of Europe’s executive body, the Committee of Ministers. The more important of these were referred to the European Court of Human Rights, which sat on a part-time basis.     From the late 1980s onwards, a steep rise in the overall caseload brought the two-tier Commission and Court structure under pressure; in 1955 the Commission registered a total of 138 applications; by 1988 the annual total was 1,009 and by 1997, 4,750. Protocol No. 11 to the Convention was therefore conceived, to reform the system by replacing it with a single, full-time Court. On 1 November 1998 Protocol No. 11 came into force. However, the Commission continued to function until 31 October 1999 to process nearly 500 pending applications which had been declared admissible before 1 November 1998.     President of the European Commission of Human Rights Stefan Trechsel said:   “The Commission pioneered the protection of human rights at international level. Its strength lay not only in the quality and devotion of its Members, but also in the close and friendly cooperation with the staff of its equally qualified and motivated Secretariat. Together, we developed a strong spirit of friendship and commitment which was all to the benefit of the people of Europe.”     Speaking at an event held to pay tribute to the work of the Commission, President of the European Court of Human Rights Luzius Wildhaber said: “The Convention system owes a great debt to the Commission and its members. For many years the Commission was the enforcement machinery of the Convention. The Commission therefore wrote many of the important chapters in the history of the Convention. Fact-finding, friendly settlements and to a large extent admissibility were the privileged domains of the Commission and were the areas in which it was perhaps most obviously active and those in which its legacy will make itself most felt. But of course its influence on the substantive development of the Convention case-law was important all along. Many of the leading judgments of the Court had their roots in the opinion of the Commission.”   ***   Contact:     Emma Hellyer (telephone: (0)3 90 21 42 15) Fax:   (0)3 88 41 27 91 [1] In 1998, the Commission had 32 members and a secretariat of 100 permanent and 50 temporary staff members.